by Jeffrey Rickman
I am regularly told that the fact that I have left The United Methodist Church now excludes me from any public speech about the denomination that formed me. It makes sense that many within the UMC would like for me to stop speaking: there is a lot I have to say that is not flattering to those who are in charge. The stranger thing has been others who left the UMC alongside me who then correct me and others for continuing to care for those folks. They sometimes cite the story of Lot’s wife as being a warning about the harms of looking back after leaving a place.
There are ways in which Christians are called to be unnatural, to cut off parts of ourselves. When Jesus says to cut off the hand or gouge out the eye that causes us to sin, I hear a warning about going back to sinful ways; not a warning about remembering where we came from. As the Global Methodist Church decides what it wants to be, I think we will be doomed to repeat the errors of our past if we do not reflect upon them, taking stock of what went wrong so that we do not unwittingly do it again. Continue Reading………
Omnia Methodist 